December 2009 MMA News Archive - Page 2

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Most fans that I’ve talked with over the past few months believe Rashad Evans had to be just a bit disappointed when he first learned the identity of his opponent for UFC 108 on January 2.
After all, he had spent six weeks exchanging venomous barbs with bitter rival Quinton “Rampage” Jackson on the most recent installment of The Ultimate Fighter and was then reminded of those exchanges during the subsequent airing of the 11 episodes on Spike TV. The pair was supposed to work out their differences in a headlining bout at UFC 107 in Memphis, Tennessee, but Jackson’s foray into acting put that super fight on temporary hold.

"We are waiting for the schedule of Strikeforce. It is a little bit surprising for us that there is no schedule yet. [Mousasi] will fight in April, together with Fedor (Emelianenko).
"After that, the 30th of May, he will have a fight in Japan – the first round of the light heavyweight championship. Then in July, he will have his second round of the light heavyweight championship."
"After [the April fight, Mousasi] has to make one more fight with Strikeforce," Echteld said. "Because we don't know the schedule yet, we are seriously thinking of making him do boxing fights in the second part of the year because it's still something he wants to do."
If this pushes through, 2010 could be a huge year for the Strikeforce Light Heavyweight Champion as he has the chance to win his second Grand Prix in as many weight divisions, and also a shot at holding two world titles at the same time.

Alistair Overeem recently sat down to speak about his upcoming heavyweight clash with Kazuyuki Fujita at “Dynamite!! 2009“.
The DREAM/Sengoku/K-1 promoted event will be taking place on New Years Eve from Japan.

What appeared to be a somewhat Melvin Manhoef recently sat down to speak about his New Year Eve showdown with Kazuo Misaki.
The pair will face off during the DREAM/Sengoku/K-1 promoted New Years event, “Dynamite!! 2009” on December 31, which will air live on HDNet.

With three consecutive wins inside of the Octagon since his arrival in the UFC, the one fighter that continuously seems to be thrown under the bus when talk turns to the future of the promotion’s heavyweight division in the absence of current champion Brock Lesnar is without a doubt Junior dos Santos.
The heavy handed Brazilian knockout artist burst onto the UFC scene with the first round demolition of the highly regarded Fabricio Werdum before rattling off consecutive TKO victories over the likes of Stefan Struve and Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic.
As it now looks like Shane Carwin and Frank Mir will be slugging it out for the UFC interim heavyweight crown, Dos Santos doesn’t agree with the decision, and surprisingly it’s not in his best interest but a close friend’s.

"This is like the highest point you can reach. It’s still a little bit difficult to believe, but I am in the UFC. What better way to prove myself than to knock out Dos Santos ... If I play my game and I be relaxed, and listen (to my corner) through the whole thing, I won’t, I hope there won’t be no problems because he is a good fighter, but his stand-up game is not in my league. For sure I’m going to knock him out. I do MMA to knock somebody out, because then you know you won. He’s on the ground. He’s sleeping, you’re standing, and it’s better than after two rounds the judge says to tell you who is better. If I knock him out then I did my job and nobody can say anything."
Gilbert Yvel anticipates a highlight reel debut when he takes on the fast-rising heavyweight prospect Junior dos Santos at UFC 108: "Evans vs. Silva" on Jan. 2 in Las Vegas.

While the 2009 World MMA Awards was already a highly anticipated year-end event, the confirmed list of attendees recently released for the black-tie gala added even more excitement.
A star-studded cast of confirmed presenters and award nominees was released Monday, and it included legendary UFC fighters Randy Couture, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Tito Ortiz, Wanderlei Silva and Georges St-Pierre, as well as UFC president Dana White.

After a few late injuries forced some card-shuffling over the holiday season, "WEC 46: Varner vs. Henderson" is once again nearly complete.
Featuring a lightweight title unification match between dual champs Jamie Varner and Benson Henderson, WEC 46 takes place Jan. 10 at ARCO Arena in Sacramento, Calif.
The main card airs live on Versus.

Changes of opponent have become commonplace in the UFC recent months, but not all have been quite as dramatic of a shift as welterweight Martin Kampmann's path to Saturday's "UFC 108: Evans vs. Silva" event.
Kampmann (15-3 MMA, 6-2 UFC) was originally expected to face fellow slugger Rory Markham (16-5 MMA, 1-1 UFC), but he will now meet grappling standout Jacob Volkmann (9-1 MMA 0-1 UFC).

Greg Jackson's MMA-trained bantamweight Frank Gomez (8-1 MMA, 2-1 WEC) has suffered an undisclosed injury in training and has been forced to withdraw from a planned bout at WEC 46 bout with Wagnney Fabiano (12-2 MMA, 2-1 WEC).
Fabiano is expected to remain on the card, though a replacement opponent has not yet been secured.

And the curse continues...
Vladimir Matyushenko on Tuesday confirmed to MMAWeekly.com that his originally scheduled opponent for this weekend’s UFC 108 in Las Vegas, Steve Cantwell, is out of their fight due to undisclosed reasons.

"Rashad is a really tough guy. I even feel he should fight one division down, at middleweight, because he’s practically my size. But he doesn’t want to hear it; he likes that weight and is on fire. I feel he has a good chance of being division champion again. This fight will be tough, because he’s got a really tricky opponent. We worked together on several aspects so he can return to being champion and let’s see how it goes. I can’t wait for him to get in there."

"MMA is spanking the WWE as far as the pay-per-view stuff. Dana White and the UFC has done an amazing job, and it's all about timing. The UFC was ready to close its doors, they were losing a ton of money, they were going under, they were getting ready to go out of business, and then they did a reality show called The Ultimate Fighter. They developed the characters; they made people care about the fighters; the people found out who the fighters were; they breathed life into the fighters. That's what I want to do with TNA. They've got the best talent in the world down there, but no one is breathing life into the characters. I have learned a ton of stuff from MMA, watching them. They remind me of TNA. Ton of talent, but no one has put that Frankenstein, shock the monster, breath some life into the characters. I learned a ton from MMA, and I get along great with Dana White -- he's awesome."

The 2010 plan for Brazilian slugger Thiago Silva (14-1 MMA, 5-1 UFC) is a simple one: get another shot at Lyoto Machida.
The former light heavyweight title challenger already took one step toward that goal with a spectacular TKO of Keith Jardine in August. Now he hopes to take another with a win over Rashad Evans (13-1-1 MMA, 8-1-1 UFC) in the main event of Saturday's "UFC 108: Evans vs. Silva" event in Las Vegas.

When Affliction entertainment nailed up the shutters, the famed Dutch striker was left in limbo. He had been vocal about his UFC aspirations in the past, but nothing was set in stone until Gabriel Gonzaga was forced to withdraw from his bout at UFC 108, opposite rising contender Junior Dos Santos.From there, negotiations sped up and the Pride veteran quickly inked a deal with the UFC to fill in for “Napao” for the televised portion of the Jan. 2 fight card.

Losing is always miserable, but in a combat sport like MMA, getting beaten is no figure of speech. If you lose, you hurt; physically and badly. The risk and danger involved in MMA competition helps make it more exciting than other sports, but behind every highlight-reel knockout and submission is ugly and unfortunate pain — at least for the guy laid out.

Dan Henderson, Jake Shields or Jason Miller: if you could choose, with who would you like to fight and how do you think that the fight would be?
Jake Shields... He has the belt.
Gegard Mousasi has the belt of the category above. Do you think about changing category to have this revenge? What would you make different?
I’m a professional athlete and I don’t keep remembering the defeats.

Yes, boxing. It would seem that Gegard Mousasi has quite a full plate on his 2010 schedule: His manager says in the first half of the year Mousasi will appear in both Strikeforce and DREAM, then participate in the DREAM Light Heavyweight GP scheduled to start in May and continue in July, and depending on the Strikeforce schedule after that he may even do some boxing.